The legal battle between the San Francisco Bay Guardian and the SF Weekly is "a war straight out of the last century in its ruthlessness and its destructive potential," writes The Stranger's Eli Sanders in a 10,000-plus word cover story this week. The piece covers a lot of ground, but frames the battle as one between two alt-titans: Bay Guardian publisher Bruce Brugmann and Village Voice Media executive editor Michael Lacey. "These two men have hated each other for decades," Sanders writes, "but with increasing venom since 1995, when Lacey showed up in San Francisco in cowboy boots to announce that he and his partners had just purchased the tiny SF Weekly and planned to make a huge success of it."

Continue ReadingThe Stranger Looks at ‘The Crazy Alt-Weekly War in San Francisco’

White uses most of his space in this week's New York Press review of Greenberg to reflect on the controversy that spilled out last week over his being disinvited from the film's screening. The snub, which was the subject of much chatter among New York film and media types, was allegedly due to White's calling for the mother of Greenberg director Noah Baumbach to have an abortion. As this allegation was debated on the web, Village Voice critic J. Hoberman dug up a copy of the review, which wasn't available online, from the public library and posted it online in a post titled "Proof That Critic Armond White Did Call for Noah Baumbach's Abortion." (By the way, Baumbach's mother, Georgia Brown, was a Voice film critic in the 1980s.) That gesture was not looked upon kindly by White, who contends that Hoberman "deliberately mischaracterized the review," before attacking the longtime Voice critic for "normaliz[ing] the arrogance of class privilege" and calling him "a force behind racist snobbery" and "the scoundrel-czar of contemporary film criticism." MORE: Hoberman responds.

Continue ReadingArmond White Talks ‘Greenberg’ Snub, Attacks Village Voice Critic

A lawsuit filed by the Bank of Montreal on behalf of a group of institutional lenders seeks a temporary restraining order and injunction to stop the San Francisco Bay Guardian's efforts to collect millions of dollars from SF Weekly as part of 2008's predatory-pricing jury verdict. Last week, a Superior Court commissioner ruled that the Guardian is entitled to half of the Weekly's ad revenue; the banks are arguing that they have the first legal right to any money made by the Weekly. Meanwhile, The Stranger reports that it has court filings that show Weekly parent company Village Voice Media Holdings has been declared in default on an $80 million loan it has from the Bank of Montreal. This comes as the Weekly is asking for a separate restraining order to stop the Guardian from sending letters to Weekly advertisers; they say advertisers have been receiving conflicting notices from the Guardian and Bank of Montreal about who has first rights to the Weekly's revenue. In a court filing, the Weekly's lawyer says the confusion, if allowed to continue, "is likely to devastate SF Weekly's advertising business beyond repair."

Continue ReadingSF Weekly’s Banks File Suit Against the Bay Guardian

"We're hoping you can lean back with this thing, curl up on the couch and take it into the bathroom and read it," the digital director for Village Voice Media Holdings said at Saturday's "iPad: New Opportunities for Content Creators" session at SXSW. Jensen thinks the iPad will help publishers who value quality design and journalism, by giving them a more visual platform to work with than the general web. "It's going to bring back nice-looking design, and good-looking ads, too," he said.

Continue ReadingBill Jensen Talks iPad at SXSW Panel

In its annual State of the News Media report, the Project for Excellence in Journalism notes that the combined circulation of AAN member papers dropped by nearly 7 percent in 2009, adding to the 5 percent drop in 2008. But the report points out that many small-market papers grew circulation in 2009, and that alts, like other newspapers, are increasingly moving to digital platforms. Village Voice editor Tony Ortega tells PEJ that alt-weeklies are coming out of the downturn in better shape than dailies, due to a more flexible business model and the fact that alts have always been free. "There's no doubt that the economy was just as hard on alternative weeklies as it was on the dailies," he says. "But it's also obvious that some alt-weeklies have come through the tough times in better shape than others."

Continue ReadingPEJ: 2009 Was a ‘Difficult’ Year for Alt-Weeklies

Feiffer says Backing Into Forward, to be released Tuesday by Doubleday, is a "cautionary tale" about "getting rejected and slapped in the face by the powers-that-be." The 81-year-old Pulitzer-winning cartoonist, best known for his long tenure at the Village Voice, says "the boy-cartoonist in me ... remains foolishly idealistic as ever." He remembers starting to draw his Voice strip in 1956, a year after the paper was founded, thinking: "The more painful the subject ... the funnier it should look."

Continue ReadingJules Feiffer Releasing a Memoir

Fork on the Left, Knife in the Back "is the latest zippy collection of columns and essays" from the Village Voice nightlife/gossip columnist, according to press materials. Musto, who is currently celebrating his 25th anniversary at the Voice, talks to Black Book about New York nightlife, social networking and writing a daily column. "Sometimes it's on the days that you have nothing to write about that you do your best work because it forces you to dig inside yourself and come up with some high concept," Musto says. "I come up with good stuff like advice to celebrities, telling them how to get a life, or I'll just do questions and let the readers do the work for me." MORE MUSTO: In a video segment, he talks to Streetsblog about his preferred mode of transportation: his bicycle.

Continue ReadingMichael Musto Releasing New Book

A Superior Court commissioner has ruled the San Francisco Bay Guardian is entitled to half the advertising revenue of the SF Weekly to help collect $21 million in damages after a 2008 jury verdict of illegal price-cutting. Guardian attorney Jay Adkisson says the ad revenue would be "a very significant" amount -- potentially as much as $200,000 a month. Meanwhile, the Weekly's parent company, Village Voice Media Holdings (VVMH), will ask a state appeals court to overturn the ruling. VVMH executive associate editor Andy Van De Voorde says the Weekly will stay in business regardless. The Weekly is also currently in the midst of a separate appeal of the verdict. MORE from Westword.

Continue ReadingCourt: Bay Guardian Gets Half of SF Weekly’s Ad Revenue

SF Weekly's debut of a new four-color glossy cover this week makes it the sixth Village Voice Media Holdings (VVMH) print publication to adopt the sleek, magazine-style format, and the company plans on rolling out glossy covers at all of its publications within the next eighteen to 24 months, according to a release. "The glossy is the next step in our evolution," president and chief operating officer Scott Tobias says in a statement.

Continue ReadingVVMH Plans to Roll Out Glossy Covers for All its Publications